The New York Times
The residents of a rebel-held Syrian town, besieged and bombarded by government forces for more than three years, learned Thursday morning that an international aid delivery was headed their way, for the first time ever. So they began to gather, as close as they could get to a government checkpoint that seals them off from the outside world.
But they got nothing. Instead, at day’s end, government officials turned away the convoy, revoking permission negotiated in advance. And moments later, two civilians, a father and son, were dead, hit by a shelling attack on the area where they had been waiting.
“The U.N. and International Committee of the Red Cross (I.C.R.C.) aborted the mission to Daraya because the convoy was refused entry, due to the medical and nutritional supplies on board,” the United Nations spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said in a written statement, referring to the town. “These conditions, imposed by government security personnel, were unacceptable, and contrary to earlier guarantees and approvals obtained by the Syrian government.”
Residents of the town blamed government forces for the attack; the Syrian government is likely to blame insurgents. But to people living in Daraya — a working-class suburb of the capital, Damascus, that was one of the first areas to rise up in street protests against the government — the day’s events summed up their abandonment.
The air forces of at least 12 countries are flying missions over Syria, and the global powers are pushing for peace talks between the government and the opposition and calling for delivery of aid. Yet the government still blocked access to more than half of the 905,000 people who were supposed to receive United Nations aid this month. To Syrian activists, that failure makes the global powers appear incompetent and possibly complicit in their suffering.
The first shock for Daraya came when residents learned that there was no food in the convoy, other than baby formula, even though some people in the town face impending starvation.
Next, the convoy was stopped at the last government checkpoint, where it stood all day as the aid agencies — the United Nations, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the International Committee of the Red Cross — tangled with officials over access.
At one point, according to residents and antigovernment activists, the aid workers were told that they would have to remove medical supplies from the convoy, a demand often made by pro-government forces.
Finally, word came that the convoy would not be allowed to enter Daraya at all. It was refused entry “at the last government checkpoint despite having obtained prior clearance by all parties that it could proceed,” the Red Cross and the United Nations said in a joint statement. The vehicles headed back to Damascus. That was when the shelling started.
Jan Egeland, a former United Nations emergency relief chief and now an adviser to the United Nations mediator, Staffan de Mistura, said in a Twitter post that the convoy had been blocked by the Fourth Division, an elite unit of the Syrian Army, “because it carried baby milk!” and asked how low “can men with arms sink?”
Daraya has been surrounded since November 2012, with no regular access to food and medicine. It is frequently hit by government airstrikes, barrel bombs dropped by helicopters and artillery shells. It is controlled by insurgents, most of them local militants; its isolation has made it less susceptible to a takeover by foreign fighters.
A recent United Nations assessment found that nearly all Daraya’s buildings had been damaged, and since the closing of a smuggling route several months ago, some of the town’s most vulnerable residents have begun to show signs of malnutrition and starvation.
In New York on Thursday, the United Nations Security Council issued statements of “outrage at all recent attacks in Syria directed against civilians,” as well as at indiscriminate attacks, saying they may amount to war crimes.
It also called on the leaders of the International Syria Support Group, which is pushing for peace talks, to press the warring parties to stop attacking civilians, a somewhat absurdly circular request because the group is led by Russia and the United States, the Council’s own most powerful members.
The Syria Campaign, an advocacy group calling for a no-fly zone, airdrops of emergency aid and other measures to protect civilians, declared: “With the denial of access today and the shelling of those gathered at the collection point, it is clear that the U.N. and its donors’ failures have put malnourished people in the firing line. This is a dark day for the U.N.”